The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is reportedly drafting new arbitrary rules that would criminalize firearms owned by hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans, and Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz is calling for the gun regulation agency to back off of its plans to rule stabilizing braces on pistol-style firearms to be illegal.
Gaetz released a press release calling for the ATF to back off of what some are calling a stealth gun control ruling imposed by fiat. The ATF is said to be considering declaring stabilizing arm braces to be illegal devices. Arm braces are devices commonly used on what are known as AR-15-style pistols, weapons that use the platform of the famous rifle while lacking a traditional rifle stock. AR-15 pistols can legally be shorter than what’s regulated as a “short-barreled rifle” under existing gun laws, as they don’t qualify as rifles, containing the arm brace instead.
Gaetz slammed the rumored ATF plan to declare new restrictions on arm braces, which are designed for users to fire their AR pistols with the weapon braced against their elbow.
The ATF is claiming weapons with arm braces are designed to be fired from the shoulder in a manner akin to a rifle, and that the arm brace configuration is merely an attempt to skirt rules on short-barreled rifles. Gaetz questioned the agency’s logic in a Wednesday press release.
“But now, what we find, is that the ATF is making it very difficult for people to have arm braces. They’re changing standards and changing rules,” says the Florida conservative. “And I am particularly frustrated when our government, at the administrative and executive level, goes beyond their grant of authority in our Constitution and in our Federal Statutes. Nothing gives anyone at ATF the ability to constrain the use of arm braces.”
Millions of American gun owners are left in a lurch as the ATF considers arbitrarily banning a form of commonly owned civilian firearm.